 What I wouldn't give for some color. A man enters a ruined city in search of his wife and daughter. He ends up finding a woman and her daughter and has to help them escape what is left of the city. With limited resources and ammo, it won't be an easy trip.
1. Gameplay
Years ago I saw a trailer for I Am Alive and was instantly intrigued. The trailer didn’t reveal much, but what it did show was pretty awesome. The main character gets chased by these goons for a bottle of water. Instead of giving them the water, the throws it out onto a large sheet of glass. When the goons dive for the water, the glass breaks and they fall to their death. It highlighted the cruelty and desperation that people were driven to in this post-apocalyptic setting.  So far, not bad. Then I heard nothing about the game for years. It was even released without me hearing anything about it. I finally found it and got a chance to see the end result. It is nothing like what I expected. The world is dark, colorless, and devoid of all life. The player will find other people, but they’re all either enemies who want the player dead or random survivors who send the player on idiotic fetch-quests. If you’ve never heard of the term “fetch-quest”, it means that the person tells the player to fetch them an item. That’s it.  Seriously? Why don't you look for it. For example, the player be tasked with finding such necessities as a bottle of wine, fresh tomatos, a carton of cigarettes, and a battery for a forklift. Some of the items made sense (the forklift had to be used to free a man whose leg had been trapped by rubble), but some of them were so illogical that I wanted my character to tell the person off. Imagine my frustration when I was told that a woman couldn’t eat canned food anymore, she had to have a fresh tomato. In a world where bottles of water are worth more than all the gold in Fort Knox, it was beyond me that anyone could refuse any type of food.  You find tomatoes here, in case you were wondering. Oh and the main character is never named. I’m not sure if that was on purpose or not, but how am I supposed to tell my friends about my character’s backstory? “Nameless father and husband is looking for his family when he stumbles upon a random mother and daughter who happen to not be his wife or kid”? This game could have been interesting, but it’s basically completely devoid of real content. It’s a platformer with a weak story, terrible scripting, and only hints of interesting characters. If you want a game with similar style but much better action, look into the Uncharted series.
This game took me around 10 hours to complete the entire campaign. With no “New Game+” mode, a restart of the game would be extremely difficult. With nothing new in the story to gain by trying this game again, I have no desire to replay the campaign.
The beginning of this game was very difficult and resources had to be very carefully consumed. This, unfortunately, forced me to perform the game nearly perfectly every time I went through a chapter. The limited number of “restart checkpoint” tokens meant that if I failed, it was sometimes easier to restart from the beginning of the chapter rather than the beginning of a checkpoint. Other than this, I didn’t find much of this game very difficult. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in this game will be somewhat rare. The player will encounter enemies here and there, but killing them is extremely difficult. The game gives the player a very limited number of bullets. While each bullet is effectively a one-hit kill, their rarity means that the player will have to think carefully about which enemies to shoot, which to stab, which to kick off a ledge, and which to simply avoid.  Most can't be avoided. On those rare occasions when I did decide to shoot an enemy, the amount of blood was small and very brief. It was more common for me to attack and kill an enemy with my machete. This would result in a slightly greater amount of blood, especially if I ended up stabbing my enemy straight through the stomach.  The recoil of the shot hides almost all of the blood. Sometimes enemies would be severely injured but not killed. If this was the case, I could run up to an enemy and execute him. This would involve me stabbing him hard in the chest. However, I never quite understood the purpose of this. At first I was concerned that the enemy would get back up, but if the player leaves the enemy alone he will eventually die anyway. The player doesn’t earn any extra items or experience for an execution, so there really is no purpose other than for the novelty.  Really, it's more like euthanasia than execution. Eventually the player gets a bow and arrow. Notice how I didn’t say “arrows”. The player gets a single arrow that can be retrieved and reused endlessly. This will make the game much easier and violence more common. A player who is good enough can use a single arrow to take out a group of nearby enemies with relative ease. The “quality” of violence doesn’t increase with the bow, though. It simply makes the scenarios where violence is necessary much faster and easier to complete.  Oh god ouch. There are ways for the player to kill enemies using the environment. Most of the time this involves simply kicking an enemy off a cliff. But there are a few open fires located in the game. If the player manages to back an enemy up onto one of these fires, he can kick the enemy into the fire and instantly kill him. There’s a lot of rolling around and screaming, but the enemy doesn’t get back up.  Why doesn't he just get out of the fire? The only reason why the violence rating isn’t even lower is because it’s nearly impossible to avoid violent confrontations. Very few enemies choose to surrender to the player, even after the player kills all of their friends. Running away from enemies is almost impossible. Really, the game forces the player to figure out what is the most efficient way to kill all enemies while using as few resources as possible.
Sexuality is almost completely absent from this game. In fact, with the exception of a single chapter, sexuality is completely devoid in this game. In the one exception, the player has to enter a hotel and find Mei’s mother, who has been kidnapped by local bandits. It turns out that the bandits are using the hotel as a sort of rape house. For the most part, the rape aspects are only implied in some very brief conversations and the look of the women.  I'm here to rescue you, really. If the player looks around the hotel in the right location, he will stumble upon a woman who is just about to be raped. Her male attacker will mention that they have “gone through this” before, and begins to finger her. The player can see all of this via the shadows silhouetted on a curtain. Eventually, the woman spits on her attacker, who pulls out a gun and clearly intends to shoot the woman. I intervened before that happened.  Well this is awkward.
Substances are included in this game but are extremely mild overall. The player will be able to find a small collection of different consumable items that will allow him to regain health, stamina, or stamina capacity at any time. Most of these items are food or beverage that would be commonly found in the real world. However, there are also things like “adrenaline syringes” that would not be smart for the average person to take recreationally.  I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to supplies. However, all of these items are extremely rare overall and none of them have a “consuming” animation. The player simply accesses his inventory and consumes the item. It is also possible to go through the entire game without using most of these items. It is difficult, but the player is encouraged to only use items when it is absolutely necessary.
Gambling is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
There are no law enforcement personnel in this game.
There is no multiplayer mode in this game.
Extreme sports is definitely a factor in this game. The player is going to have to free climb across dangerous terrain in the ruins of the city. Most of the time the climbing will be relatively simple, such as climbing up piping or walking on an iron beam to cross a chasm.  Not sure why I didn't just walk across. However, there are plenty of times when the climbing is perilous to the point of absurdity. For example, there are numerous times when the player will have to climb up the sides of skyscrapers hundreds of feet off the ground. All of this is done without any real climbing equipment and without any sort of safety harness.  This seems dangerous. The player will also have to occasionally leap from climbing surface to climbing surface while climbing. By this I mean he’s hanging on a ledge and has to swing himself over to another ledge just out of reach. He always manages to catch the ledge, but it’s still extremely dangerous. There are also a few times when he will perform all of these stunts while a little girl is strapped to his back.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
Cannibalism As I was wandering through the dusty waste I stumbled upon a slab of meat. It looked like a gigantic steak, but the game only referred to it as “meat”. My character mentioned that this was the second time I had found such meat (even though it was only my first), but nothing seemed to come of it. Eventually I discovered another slab of meat cooking near two surprisingly friendly survivors. They offered me some of their meat and a squirrel stick and didn’t try to kill me (rare for this game).  Wait, what is this? After poking around their camp I discovered that people had been caged up in an area way in the back. I had suspected that the friendly guys were cannibals when I had seen cages with human ribcages near them, but hadn’t any hard proof until I found these people. Basically the “friendly” people were kidnapping other people, killing them, and then eating them. Even knowing that the “meat” was people, the player can still consume it for some significant benefits. Rape As mentioned before in the “Sexuality” section, there is one chapter where the player has to infiltrate a bandit rape hotel and free some of the women inside. Sexual assault can definitely be observed if the player manages to find one of the captured women. Human Disfigurement There is one very difficult to find area where the player can find and give food and other supplies to a man. The man has clearly been severely disfigured, although the game never clearly defines what caused his disfigurement. The man never appears in any other section of the game.  Seriously? I don't get to find out what's going on here? Suicide There is one location where I found a woman who had been hanged. It seems like she had hanged herself, but I can't be 100% sure. Since there were no signs of struggle or any other forms of violence, I am assuming the developers intended to depict her suicide rather than her murder.  Such an awkward place to hang yourself...
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